This English article in Kommersant might shed some light on why PyeongChang dropped its second Olympic bid. (HT to the always excellent Korea Economic Reader)
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This English article in Kommersant might shed some light on why PyeongChang dropped its second Olympic bid. (HT to the always excellent Korea Economic Reader)
Korea News via Google
21 Comments
“On the screen, an old South Korean woman was saying that she had last seen her North Korean son 50 years ago and that if the Olympics are held in Korea, she will have a chance to see him again.” God, why didn’t they just threaten to kill grandma if Pyongchang didn’t get the Games?
Sure, “if the Olympics are held in Korea,” not if the hypocritical Roh government didn’t bend over every time KJI called off the family reunions on a whim. And the absolute lack of any causality in “Pyongchang gets Winter Games = old lady sees her son.”
I’m sure some sad piano or violin music was playing while granny told her sob story like they do with the evening news stories in Korea.
Referring to this?
Would that it were so, But the problem with this bit of “reporting” is that there are a grand total of 3 Americans on the IOC (out of 115 regular members, 24 honorary members and 2 honour members. Even assuming that all the Americans initially voted for Salzburg rather than Pchang, their three votes hardly consituted most of the changed votes for Salzburg in the second round and, in any event, would not have altered the results had they been voted in favor of Pchang.
Nevertheless, I imagine we now don;t have long to wait to hear the nutizens whingeing about how the US torpedoed Pchang.
The most striking genuine facts revealed in the article are Korea’s reliance on “hiring” mercenary shills, like the Italian skier and the Moldovan boy and cynically peddling fantasies like the claim that Pchang getting the Olympics would have facilitated unification or even reunions of separated families.
Haven’t noticed any yet. Knock on wood.
I agree with Robert regarding the number of swing votes and the number of American delegates
Well, to paraphrase a commonly repeated phrase from the Vietnam anti-war era, “No Russian ever stood in front of my embassy and yelled, ‘F*cking USA!’”
I have no idea what was in the minds of American delegates, but S Korea has not really gone out of its way to endear itself with America during the past 10 years.
Like Robert, I’m almost waiting for this little known voting fact to become known in Seoul and for a yet another demonstration in Gwanghwamun.
* * *
Incidentally, should anyone wish to be included in the Korea Economic Reader distribution, please drop me a line at tom@softlandingkorea.com with “Add me to KER” in the subject line.
The KER is a free clipping service of about a half-dozen articles a day, many with my semi-insightful “Coyner’s Comment.”
Most of the stuff is on Korea with a fair amount on Japan. Most of it deals with business and economics, but there is a fair amount of coverage of politics and social trends — including in N Korea.
Much of the KER is not as interesting as Marmot’s Hole, some of it can be even more interesting than Marmot’s Hole, and perhaps up to 20% comes from leads found in Marmot’s Hole.
Regardless, I take it as a matter of pride to take people off the list as soon as they want off.
It’s a fishy article, but those quotes do lend support to the idea that not many outsiders share the hope-over-experience optimism about North Korea that Seoul still has after some 8 years of the Sunshine Policy.
You know that stuff about the Moldovian guy (no way am I ever referring to a 18-19 year old as a “kid”) sounds a little creepy.
I think the US is safe this time around, Japan seems to be the official scape goat.
http://www.lostnomad.org/2007/.....ment-46133
(Check the link I give, and then slim’s corrected summarization.)
Tom–Thanks for that article. Certainly Russian cynicism shines in it. The magical peaceful reunification ploy reminds me of this famous National Lampoon cover:
http://www.fishgrease.net/Lampoon_Shoot_Dog.jpg
Afraid not. The official scapegoat has been President Roh. Stuff like this today:
http://news.naver.com/news/rea.....enu_id=115
The article you cited just blamed Japan for being dicks AFTER Korea had already lost.
The Moldovian ‘boy’, mentioning the 3 votes, and the old lady? What were they thinking? Did they really think that giving them a guilt trip would work?
Congratulating the winning party = being a dick these days?
Yes, because the Japs have to be careful of offending Korea or else… or else what? Ah, never mind.
LOL Wedge, my “threaten to kill grandma” snark was a paraphrase of that National Lampoon cover. Great minds….
I thought if I quoted it directly I’d have to change “…We’ll Shoot This Dog!” to “We’ll Eat This Dog” to fit the occasion
I question the judgment of the IOC if the Moldovan “boy” and grandma got Pyongchang to the 2nd round–hope it was something in the presentation about, say, facilities or snow conditions that swayed them.
I’m still saddened that Pyeongchang lost this — it would’ve been good for Korea. I was a staff member of the 2010 bid, and we worked really hard for that one, too. Everybody thought we had only a slim chance that time, and lost by three votes; thought we were sure to win this time, and lost by four… (plainly, not having ME on the job is worth exactly one vote…)
On the “Moldovian boy” aspect, some of you may not know what that was about, so it could seem kinda bizarre to you; but it was legitimate:
As part of the 2010 bid, Gangwon Province launched the “Dream Program” in which youth from impoverished countries without any winter sports available were brought to Korea with government funding, for sports camps held during winters. They were taught one or more standard winter sports and, hopefully, inspired to try to continue with it. Winter sports are comparatively quite expensive to participate in, both in general and in particular aspects, and so most of the human race has little chance to ever experience them.
Even though we lost that bid, Gangwon has continued with this program. Publicity about it was a natural part of the 2014 bid, as it demonstrates Korea’s commitment to spreading winter sports globally, especially to some of the less-privileged people of the world.
(which is not necessarily to say that i believe that ‘Korea’ or any particular sector of its government really *has* that commitment; i just mean that this line of argument was a part of this bid, and a legitimate part because Gangwon-do really did run the “Dream Program”, and has promised to continue it whether they ever get the Winter Olympics or not).
#14.
You know that the more cynical of us would say that the whole program was created in order to use the participants, to make Pyeonchang more international than it really is.
Emotional appeals for reunification, a young foreign athlete? Sounds to me like their pitch was aimed at Koreans.
#13: I figured that’s what you were talking about, but saw a duty to explain it to the ignorant masses.
When you lack the qualifications, you go with what you know. For Koreans, that’s peddling grief and crassly tugging at heart strings in search for sympathy votes. I didn’t have to see the giant pic of the crying halmoni on the presentation big screen in a Chosun article to know that was the route their presentation would take.
The constant flood of statements from Korean Olympic officials telling everyone in earshot that a Pyeongchang games would foster a mood of peace and reconciliation foretold that strategy. I’m sure there was debate up until the last minute about whether to include a slide showing a massive nuclear blast and the caption “Pyeongchang 2014 without the Olympic spirit.”
It’s also not surprising that the Russians (and likely most other delegations) think the grief-whoring is absurd and pathetic. The crack about Salzburg having no singing children was classic. I’m sure when the 2018 presentation comes around, the pictures of Korean kids crying after the 2014 loss will be front and center in that bid. “Pyeongchang 2018: Because Korean Kids need to sing, not cry.”
Sanshin, you get my respect for working on a project that got solid results despite severe handicaps, but implying that Korea is actually committed to spreading winter sports to the poor people of the world…you really did get a hold of a bad batch of crack.
Committed to spreading Samsung phones and Rain CDs? Yes. Committed to spreading gonorrhea to underage hookers? Yes. Committed to spreading the glory that is hallyu? Absolutely.
But committed to giving skiing scholarships and running free short-track camps for the poor? Only if they can fit in on their half-day off from toiling in Korean factories for slave wages.
Are the presentations all that the IOC base their judgement on? Seems like they should have done their own data-gathering beforehand.
Assuming they have other sources of information, I would hope that the members voted according to which location would be best suited for the event, rather than which presentation irked them least.
But the Korean presentation does sound terrible. If it was difference of 3 votes maybe a better presentation would have given PyoungChang the opp to play host.
The IOC does indeed do their own data-gathering beforehand. The final presentations before thew vote, from every bidder, are largely emotion-provoking.
iheartblueballs: see my #15 above.
Living in Korea, i often wish i WAS on crack. But alas…
Several of you guys miss the point that spreading participation in and appreciation of their favorite sports is really a major concern of many IOC Members. Most especially perhaps, those of them connected to major sports-equipment manufacturers (recognition of this factor should satisfy proudly-cynical among you).
It has been a strong and positive aspect of Pyeongchang’s two bids that Korea is a recently-Third-World country in which modern winter sports did not exist, but are now fairly popular. And that there are, within affordable tourism distance, some two billion human beings who have only ever seen winter sports on TV, but some 10% of them may be curious to try a little skiing or ice-skating, and have enough money to come here for that (Vancouver, Colorado, Switzerland, Austria and Japan being much more expensive and far away for them). These factors provide some counter-balance to Korea’s current lack of snow and facilities… Tho apparently not enough.
More than two billion. Give this information and its future potential a few minutes of contemplation before the next time you disparge Korea’s bidding for a Winter Olympics as being just ridiculous, hopeless and absurd… Please take my word for it that many IOC Members and others concerned with the Olympic Movement do so.
I agree with Sanshinseon - Pyeongchang would have been a fine location to hold the games.
But now that the decision went the other way Koreans should accept it with grace. The Austrians did this, as well.
There cannot only be winners, after all…
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